Viz unveiled their new yaoi line, SuBLime, at Yaoi-Con last weekend with the exciting news that some of the books will be released digitally worldwide, in a convenient download-to-own format. Deb Aoki was there, and she goes in depth with a transcript of the Viz panel and an interview with the editors at About.com.

Shaenon Garrity takes an affectionate look at the long-running Basara as a guest writer for the House of 1000 Manga column at ANN.

I rounded up this week’s new manga at MTV Geek; there weren’t a lot this week, but what there is looks good. Lissa Pattillo gives her take in her On the Shelf column at Otaku USA. David Welsh chimes in as well, and he’s happy to see vol. 1 of Drops of God on the list.

News from Japan: Three Steps Over Japan takes a look at Comic Ran Twins. Shueisha has posted the first issue of its Super Dash & Go! magazine, which features light novels and manga, online, for free, until November 18. Mizu Sahara, creator of Same-Cell Organism and the manga adaptation of Voices of a Distant Star, is starting a new series, Itsuya-san, in Monthly Comic Zenon. Mika Kajiyama (Neo Angelique) is launching a new romantic comedy series, Ore to Atashi no Kareshi-sama, in Kadokawa Shoten’s Monthly Asuka in December. The baseball manga Ookiku Furikabutte/Big Windup will return to Kodansha’s Monthly Afternoon in January. And if you bought a drawing by Moto Hagio online recently… no, you didn’t. Hagio says that drawings that purported to be her work were actually forgeries, and she is contemplating legal action.

The big news out of Yaoi-Con this past weekend was the launch of Viz’s yaoi imprint, SuBLime. Deb Aoki was live-tweeting the panel, and Lissa Pattillo rounded it all up with some good commentary. Viz rescued one title, Love Pistols, which had previously been published by Tokyopop under their BLU imprint. What’s particularly interesting is that they are publishing some of the books digitally as PDF files that can be downloaded and kept on a variety of e-readers. Digital books will be priced at $5.99 and will be available worldwide, not just in North America. Viz is working with the Japanese retailer Animate (which has been publishing yaoi manga for the Kindle for a while now) and the publisher Libre, but they can license books from other publishers as well.

News from Japan:Moto Hagio has adapted Yū Nagashima’s short story Jū Jikan (10 Hours) into a two-part manga that will run in Kobunsha’s Shōsetsu Hōseki magazine. Arina Tanemura is bringing her idol manga Fudanjuku Monogatari to a close. Four series ended in the latest issue of Young Gangan magazine, but Yuto, the creator of Hanamaru Kindergarten, has already announced a new one. A chapter of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei that ran in Weekly Shōnen Magazine has been left out of the tankoubon, perhaps because of the negative comment caused by its eerie similarity to a Doraemon story. At the Official Schoolgirl Milky Crisis Blog, Jonathan Clements reprises the story of the manga-ka who thought she was too good for Fractale. And can we ever get enough GTO? Apparently not: A new, three-chapter GTO story will start in Weekly Shōnen Magazine‘s November issue.

Reviews: Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith chew over a trio of new offerings from Digital in their latest BL Bookrack column at Manga Bookshelf.

News from Japan: Three Steps Over Japan takes a good long look at Evening, another one of those seinen magazines from Kodansha that’s chock full of good manga. Suppose Sherlock Holmes was a dog… That’s the premise of Yuma Ando’s Detective Dog Sherdock, which launched in Weekly Shōnen Magazine yesterday. The 4-koma manga Kemono no Chat has come to an end. Next week will see the first issue of Shueisha’s Super Dash & Go!, a new magazine that includes both light novels and manga. And ANN has the latest Japanese comics rankings.